The club’s ladies (pictured) continued their sparkling season at the weekend, this time racing as the A Team on behalf the Central Region Cyclocross League at the Inter Regional Championships in Leicester.
On a technical course the four member team of Gemma Sargent, Naomi Woodland, Kate Turner and Anna Holden all finished the race to record 10th place for the team and uphold central league honours on their first outing at championship level.
Their top ten finish was in fact a hard earned one as both Woodland and Turner had mechanical failures which required bike changes at the designated pits area. Luckily, this is part and parcel of cyclocross racing and the team had spare bikes and a pit crew at the ready in case of such incidents.
The day before, 13 athletes from the club also continued their cyclocross adventures at Round 6 of the Central League Series held in Milton Keynes.
Held on a less technical course that the previous week’s event at Hillingdon, this was a race for the strength merchants as sticky mud and plenty of gradient meant strong legs were required throughout.
Earning the club’s first ever podium finish in a cyclocross event, veteran athlete Jackie Perry finished a superb 2nd in women’s race to further enhance the club’s involvement with the Central League Series and its newfound winter racing activity.
Finishing first for the club overall, Steffan Ford enjoyed plenty of wheel to wheel battling to come home in a time of 1:10:01 and a highly respectable placing of 39th overall.
Joel Farrow also continued to show his natural aptitude for the sport to finish second club athlete in 1:11:54. And rounding out the top three, Tim Smith put his cycling experience to good use to cross the line in 1:15:55.
Also competing were; Simon Douglas (1:09:01), Michael Humphris (1:09:36), Darren Greene (1:10:40), Mick Clark (1:10:47), Sean Bradley (1:11:33), Paul Duttton (1:11:35), Steve Mussett (1:12:44) Keith Perry (Time 1:12:50) and Simon Hall (DNF)
Ensuring that the multisport racing continues, Gary Smith competed at the famous Ballbuster Duathlon on Sunday and completed the gruelling 8 mile run/24 mile bike/8 mile run in a fantastic time of 3:04:31 to improve on his time from last year by over ten minutes and secure a superb finishing position of 34th overall out of more than 400 competitors.
Also going multisport, Darren Greene followed up his cyclocross exploits on Saturday by racing at the Wadenhoe Quadmire Challenge Duathlon on Sunday. An off-road event consisting of a 2 mile run, 6 mile bike and second 2 mile run, Greene clocked a time of 1:20:15 on a technical multi loop course including steep descents and a river’s edge run with a lot of mud.
On weekend that featured standout performances across a variety of race types, Mike Russell continued that trend at the Stevenage Half-Marathon to earn a new PB time of 1:25:5 for 36th place overall and an excellent 3rd in the MV50 age-group. Ian Hobbs also competed and set a massive personal best time of 1:49:09, an improvement of more than eight minutes
And finally, three athletes from the club competed at the Mornington Chasers Regents Park 10K Winter Series on Sunday. New members Tony and Liz Ward made the most of the club’s coaching input to set new PB times of 39:19 and 51:44 respectively. In Tony’s case, he went under forty minutes for the first time to cross the line 29th overall out of 420 finishers. Also competing was Rob Davies, who stopped the clock at 41:36.
